Stone God and Goddess in an Ark
Out of the stone ark that carried them this far in their two by two progress up to here, they've outlived everyone and everything they've known— he in his fishscales up to his waist, she in her grunge hairdo of stone: and on each face no guilt for surviving, no stony comprehension of all they've left behind, just a joy so of the moment it seems almost heartless, the two little stone gods grinning mad little grins at whoever could be so foolish as think stone thinks, as to think they could get close to what those grins might mean... And in the hotel room where all this is happening, traffic flow halting in its own stalled glow ricocheting pane to pane, I'm coalescing out of sleep, dissolving back, as if it were the moment just before the moment cracks and I become a little god, that grin on my face making me feel a little silly, silly immortal, silly not to die when my dad's long dead, Amy's dead three years, Benny died a year ago, and Jason's just died, his stare still dissolving in the room.
Credit
Copyright © 2012 by Tom Sleigh. Used with permission of the author.
Date Published
06/08/2012